The terms "tactic" and "strategy" are often confused.
If a strategy is how to win the war, a tactic how to win a single battle.
In the previous video, we talked about strategy, so let's dig into a step-by-step communication plan now.
On the screen you have what I would call the generic template of
either a strategy or a communication plan.
It starts at the bottom of the screen, the starting point.
Your whole tactic, your whole strategy is to reach the business objective:
where you want to go.
That is point A and you want to go to point B.
In communication there are a number of steps you have to take in order to get there.
The first step is to define exactly the objective that you could eventually achieve and try
to be successful with.
These objectives then move on to an audience, then to the brand, the guiding idea, you will
see that the guiding idea is very interesting, especially for people who are more creative,
and only then do we move on to channels, messages, and the tools that you will use.
If you look at the screen, you see that the tools are one of the last things that you choose.
You don't start by asking yourself, "Do I want a video a brochure or a website?".
You start with your objectives and only at the very end decide if a postcard is better
than billboard or a hot air balloon.
So what are the objectives of writing a communication plan in the first place?
Why would you do it?
Well it helps everyone in the organisation to have something to read so that they may
actually understand your communication plan, and that is great if they understand you plan
and strategy, they understand it, they agree with it,
and they align all of their actions to the plan.
I took the example from the internet of a classic communication plan
called a "Dissemination and Communication Plan".
I'm sorry for the company I took it from, I'm not going to be too critical, but basically
if you look at it, from the summary you already understand that there are more than 80 pages
in this communication plan.
I'm not obliging you to scroll through the entire thing, but can you imagine yourself
reading it if it's 80 pages long?
Do you think you will manage to align all your team members onto your communication
strategy if they have to read it for 3 days and might not understand half of the words
because they are not themselves communication officers?
No, we are already out of our main objective in writing a communication plan which is:
People read it.
Let's see how we can reduce the communication plan to 2 pages.
We start with the business objective.
I took the example of a European association that would defend start-ups in technology,
because I'm interested by technology myself and start-ups.
So, the objective of this particular association would be: we want to be considered the best
provider of information on start-ups for the next 5 years so as to be consulted every single
time legislation affects our members' interests.
That would be the business objective.
The smaller objective they could reach would be first, demonstrate goodwill so as to be
invited to every meeting talking about innovation, entrepreneurship, and international taxation
for their case.
The second objective they could reach is to make their website the one-stop-shop for info
on startups for everyone in their audience.
The third one would be to grow their membership, so attract more members as start-ups,
by 20% every year to reach a critical mass.
Their 3 objectives are very clear in this case, and anyone can understand them, whether
you're working in communication or not.
Their audiences, in this case, might derive directly from these objectives.
Our first audience could be civil servant and policymakers, in charge of topics like
tech, digital innovation, and international taxation, that makes sense, it is natural.
However, as an additional audience we could have anyone interested in tech innovation,
entrepreneurship, and its consequences on society and particularly
journalists, policymakers, and civil servants.
You see that I'm not talking to 400 million people, I'm talking to people interested in
tech innovation, entrepreneurship, that's a small target audience already, and the second
element is that they are interested in the consequences of these changes on society.
We are also reducing our target audience to only people who could understand the concept
of impact of technology on society.
So, the guiding idea of my plan is: If we help people understand complex topics in less
than 5 minutes, we save them time, we position ourselves as the most helpful organisation,
and we become a reference in the field.
That's my guiding idea, that's all.
I'm going to help all these people understand complex topics in 5 minutes.
The channels I'm going to use, how am I going to talk to these people?
Our different audiences are on LinkedIn, it's a professional social media, so it's probable,
and the second thing they may be on is Twitter for shorter interventions, when they just
need a bite-sized piece of information.
If I build a mailing list as well, I will have a direct controllable channel to talk
to them, that's the second channel I can create, it's called an "Owned Media Channel" in this case.
And finally, what I could do is to get influencers who want to have access to the latest gadgets,
the latest phones, the latest entrepreneurs in the field, so we can invite these people,
influencers, to connect with our audience.
That would be another channel.
So if I'm having Elon Musk, for instance, or if I'm having Frédéric Mazzella coming
to Brussels, that would be interesting for our audience because they want to know who
is behind the machine.
Finally, my messages, as you see, comes very late.
My messages in this case are: Understanding how the world evolves with technology allows
us to stay relevant as decision makers.
I'm putting myself in the shoes of my audience and thinking, "If I want to be a good decision
maker, I need to know how the world works, and technology has an amazing influence on
the world and how it works now. So, I need to understand that."
The second message would be, "The line between regulation that helps innovations and the
regulation that blocks innovation is thin, and nobody wants to put Europe lagging behind
Asia or lagging behind the US.
So, if I'm a good decision maker, a good policymaker, I want to see where this line exists,
I don't want to make bad decisions.
Our message is: We help you do that.
Finally, the tools, the very end of the entire plan.
Simple tools, 5-minute videos on topics like blockchain or anything complex to understand.
Distributed on social media via our channels, we talked about LinkedIn, and we're gonna
pay a little bit for promotion to be sure we reach everyone at the beginning and until
we are known enough that they come by themselves.
We're gonna probably make an event where we vulgarise with a tech entrepreneur the biggest
topics, we don't want to talk to policymakers and civil servants in the popular way like
you would imagin, "What is Blockchain in 5-minute?
Blockchain is a new..."
No!
These people are serious people, they want great information, and they want it to come
from the actual source of the information, tech entrepreneurs in this case.
Finally, we could even organise a Hackathon, which is a two-day intensive competition to
see how the public sector could benefit from these new technologies.
Blockchain in the public sector, or new cryptocurrencies that could help administrative departments,
I don't know, that is an idea among many, but that could be a very interesting focal point.
Once I have all these things, I can plan my execution.
I can say, in September, we are going to do this, in November we are going to do something
else, and in March 2020, this is what we are going to organise.
Everything is flowing logically from there.
When you look at a strategy, and I said a strategy is winning the war,
a communication plan helps you win a battle.
Well, if I take a strategy that's what it looks like, and if I take a communication
plan, that is just a little part of my strategy.
I can have many smaller communication plans all along the 3, 4, or 5 years of my strategy.
It doesn't have to be more than 3 pages long.
What does it mean for the European elections?
Well, to be honest, if you don't already have a plan, you are a little bit late.
You're not completely out of the race yet, but you're late.
Politicians arriving in Brussels will have little idea of what they should do, to be
honest they are not very sure how they can work on the most interesting topics,
they will be drowning in requests for meetings, they will get mountains of pens, USB-sticks,
and promotional bags, they will come with their local assistants who probably don't
have a good idea of what they are doing, and mostly are political militants.
Also, they will not have many friends here.
If you take these insights into account, you might be able to create a strategy to help them.
I said in the previous video that the best strategy in communication is to be helpful to someone.
Now you know how you could be helpful to the politicians coming to Brussels for the first
time, and who might be a little bit overwhelmed by the city and what we do here.
Thank you very much for your attention and see you for the next video.